


Afterlife

by cruisedirector



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Afterlife, Clones, Community: KMAS, Doppelganger, Episode: s02e21 Deadlock, Episode: s02e25 Resolutions, Episode: s03e15 Coda, Episode: s03e17 Unity, F/M, Healing, Jealousy, Lizards, Love Confessions, Mirrors, Names, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Nudity, Ritual, Spirit Animals, Spirit Guides, Visions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1997-05-31
Updated: 1997-05-31
Packaged: 2017-10-04 22:26:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/34762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cruisedirector/pseuds/cruisedirector
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A little metaphysical love story about Janeway, Chakotay, animal guides, and healing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Afterlife

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mamadracula](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mamadracula/gifts).



> DRush promised to illustrate the story upon hearing the premise. The mediocre characterization of the animal guide is based on "The Cloud" and bears little resemblance to actual Native American traditions. This story appeared in _Now Voyager_ issue 15.

The coffee wasn't helping. Neither was her habit of reading fuel consumption reports just before turning in for the night. Yet she suspected that neither of those foibles explained why her sleep was tormented--nor why the dreams always ended with her desperate to get a message to Chakotay, though she could never find him.

She'd been thinking about going to talk to him for several days. She pretended that she didn't have time, but the real problem was that she consciously had to make the time, then steel herself to buzz his door one evening after dinner, when she was certain that he didn't have a game of hoverball scheduled with B'Elanna and he wasn't on the holodeck. Chakotay had been quieter than usual since his experience with the former Borg--a combination of guilt and, she suspected, regret at how easily they'd manipulated him. She told herself she felt uncomfortable adding the burden of her disquiet to his own, but was finally forced to admit that she was avoiding her first officer because she was afraid of upsetting the dangerous balance they'd been negotiating ever since New Earth.

Sometimes she was furious with him for having so obviously fallen in love with her, and making it so complicated for them to be friends and colleagues. Other days, her knowledge of his feelings was the only thing that kept her from crying herself to sleep. She wondered uneasily what she owed him for that. She didn't want to mislead Chakotay about her intentions, but she also didn't want him to think that she didn't care about him--deeply. The simple truth was that she needed a friend, badly, and she wanted it to be him. At this point it seemed easier to open the can of worms by telling him so than to continue to hold him at a distance.

"Captain," he said with surprise in his voice when he let her in, though she was certain he had asked the computer who was at the door before opening it.

"Kathryn," she corrected him. "May I come in, Chakotay?"

He nodded and waved her through, his eyes flickering warmly, though his expression was concerned. "I take it you're not here on ship's business, Kathryn?"

"No, I'm not," she agreed. "Except inasmuch as my own mental state concerns ship's business."

"Are you worried about something?"

"Other than the usual, you mean?" He nodded sympathetically; they'd been over and over the supply problems, with no miraculous solutions in sight. It wasn't easy for her to confess personal concerns, but she couldn't afford to let them become debilitating. She knew he was watching her fidget with her hands, and opted for the direct approach. "I've been having nightmares. Ever since the shuttle crash when that alien almost killed me."

He sat down on his couch beside her and leaned forward to study the circles she could feel under her eyes. "Have you asked the Doctor about it?"

"He did a quick check, but I don't think it's anything biochemical," she sighed. "What the alien made me experience has been making me think about things, and I'm feeling...empty."

"You mean lonely?"

"That, too. But it doesn't just have to do with other people--it has to do with me. How I see myself. I'm not sure what I believe anymore about this life. Or my place in this universe."

"You're hurting in spirit," he guessed, and she smiled gratefully.

"I'm a little uncomfortable with the whole idea. And with coming to you about it--I know it's been a long time since you introduced me to your people's customs. You must think my interest was very shallow."

"Not at all..." he started to say, and she waved him silent, needing to be frank with him so that he would be honest with her.

"I know I've been quick to take the scientific approach to problems, and discount possible effects which are outside my own intellectual beliefs." She paused, itching to pace the room, then forced herself to be still, looking directly at her first officer. "And...I guess I haven't always been a very good friend, either."

He blinked and looked quickly away, and her gut wrenched. She said his name, apologetically, waiting for him to meet her eyes. He was silent for a moment, opening and closing his mouth as he thought about what to say; he took her fingers and squeezed them before clearing his throat.

"You've been a very good friend, and a very good commanding officer, and I know it isn't easy for you to separate those roles." She kept his fingers in hers and managed a smile for him, though the contact reminded her of that night on New Earth when he first told her of his feelings; it gave her the shivers. "I'll help you in whatever way I can."

She took a deep breath and blurted out, "I want to talk to my animal guide."

His lips twitched, holding back amusement. "You don't need me to contact your animal guide. You don't even need the akunah."

"I assumed as much. But I still want you there, like before."

He squeezed her hand again, and his eyes crinkled as he smiled, obviously moved by her request. Again she felt guilty for not coming to him sooner, asking for and offering the friendship which he accepted gladly. He had never pressured her for anything more; she made a mental note that she was going to have to think about why she kept making the romantic potential between them an issue when he was content to let it be.

Shaking herself, she forced her mind back to the topic at hand. "I don't have much experience with trances, and the last time I entered one, to save Kes' life in that Nikani portal, I discovered that I have all sorts of expectations I don't know how to work around. I'd feel better if you were in the room--for the ship, and for me."

"All right." He let go of her and crossed the room to get his medicine bundle while she slid off the couch onto the floor, her back against the cushions. "Want some tea first?" he asked as he passed by the replicator.

"No, thanks."

"Mind if I get some?"

"Of course not." She folded her arms over her knees, willing herself to relax. Chakotay brought the tea and the bundle and sat beside her, his hip touching hers. The black feather, the stone--this one appeared to have new markings. When lifted her hand to place it on the akunah, she was afflicted with deja vu--from that first encounter in her ready room, but also a sense that this wasn't the last time they would sit together like this.

"I should have done this a long time ago," she admitted in a whisper. "But I was afraid."

"Was your animal guide large and toothy?" He was teasing, but his eyes were sad. "At least you didn't try to kill it."

"Did B'Elanna really do that?"

"She certainly did. I was surprised--resistant people sometimes can't even find their animal guides on their first attempt. B'Elanna met hers right away, but then got so angry that I thought it must be an overly affectionate poodle or something...I shouldn't laugh. It was a difficult situation for both of us. What scared you last time?" he asked abruptly.

"Nothing from the vision. It was like you said--peaceful, and comforting." She tried to remember exactly how she had felt that day: intrigued when he had first told her on the bridge about his people's traditions, startled by his eagerness when he bounded into her ready room with his medicine bundle. It had been a little uncomfortable when he led her to the low table and took her hand to give her the equivalent of a psychoactive drug. And then blissful...floating away with the sound of his voice to that place of peace and joy, aware of him even when she couldn't see him. She'd felt guilty when Torres interrupted, not just for neglecting her duty, but because the intimacy with her first officer had been unsettling; she explained herself rather gruffly to B'Elanna before she stopped to think that Chakotay might be offended at her casually discussing what they'd been doing.

She'd sent Kim to him later to talk about animal guides. But after that evening playing pool with the junior officers, which proved relaxing in a different way--it was the first time she could remember flirting directly with Chakotay and being aware of doing so--she'd put the experience out of her mind. He did not offer again, and she had been uneasy about asking.

No longer. She gritted her teeth to tell him the truth: "I was afraid of getting close to you like this."

He met her gaze, unsmiling. "Kathryn, I would never use my traditions to take advantage of you in any way. Not personally, not professionally, not even to challenge your beliefs."

"I know. I never thought you would. It was me I was worried about." His eyes widened, and then he nodded once. "Can we start?" she asked, to move past the moment.

"If you're ready." He smiled reassuringly and lowered her hand onto the akunah. "Akoocheemoya, we are far from the sacred places of our ancestors..."

She was back on the beach watching the sun set even before he finished speaking the sacred words, feeling the breeze against her face. She'd thought about taking him here, the night she invited him to go sailing with her after he'd saved her life, but it was so personal, so much a part of her--she'd known what it would mean to bring him to this place, even on a holodeck. She'd never even come here with Mark. Lake George had been safer.

She looked around for the little lizard, but it wasn't immediately evident, so she sat back and watched the sky for a few minutes. Sunsets on New Earth had looked almost like this. In fact, the scene had changed from the last time she entered this idealized landscape: several elements from New Earth had crept into the fauna.

It was painful for her to admit how much she missed that planet. The entire time she had been there, she had tried to repress how pleasurable it was to live under an open sky, exploring geology and botany instead of the cosmos. She'd told herself she didn't want to think too much about Voyager because it would make her homesick, but the truth had been that she didn't want to admit how happy she was--working with the soil, eating fresh fruit, lying in a bathtub under the stars, knowing that Chakotay was inside the shelter, waiting for her. If he'd thanked her for showing him the true meaning of peace, then she owed him for this, her own inner sanctum.

A movement in the corner of her eye made her jump. The gecko was perched on a log, watching her.

"I'm sorry it took me so long to come back." She heard herself speaking aloud, and wondered whether Chakotay could hear her; he had been able to hear her questions to him the last time while she was in the trance state. No matter if he overheard now; she trusted him with whatever she had come here to learn. But she felt rather tentative about direct communication with a reptile. "Many things have happened to me," she told her animal guide.

The little lizard cocked its head at her, looking as if it expected her to feed it. She burst out laughing at the thought, realizing with some embarrassment that she couldn't offer anything to her animal guide: she didn't think it would want to be petted. "Why do you watch over me, anyway?" she asked. "Did you choose me, or did I choose you, somehow?" It stopped to regard its own tail for a moment, then looked at her expectantly, waiting.

"I'm afraid of dying," she burst out. The lizard opened its mouth and bobbed its head, and she realized with chagrin that it was laughing at her. Maybe it didn't believe in the finality of death, and thought her terribly silly to be concerned about such a thing. "Well, of course, it's not that simple. I have been ready to give my life for my crew. But I'm troubled by bad dreams about my father, and the alien who pretended he was my father, and about Chakotay not being able to save me. I think about my crew going on without me--or not able to go on without me. I'm afraid of dying without having finished living this life," she said softly.

_What will you do about that?_

The question startled her; she wasn't sure whether it had come from her own mind or from the creature. "I was hoping you could tell me. Can't you...give me guidance? Remind me of the things I might regret if I don't take the time to think about them? She wished she'd asked Chakotay more about the role of the animal guide--how much it was at liberty to say to her. This wasn't much like talking to a ship's counselor. "Can't you at least help me ask the right questions?"

Infuriatingly, the creature darted under the log, out of her sight. Despite the tranquility of the warm wind, she felt herself growing frustrated. If only there were some way to bring Chakotay here with her. Or someone else who could answer her questions...

She heard a sound behind her on the beach, and turned. Face to face with--herself.

Not herself, she realized almost immediately. There was a difference, shocking in its clarity, though she recognized the woman facing her despite the lack of mirror reversal. This was her other self--the one who had come onto her ship from the duplicate Voyager, the one who had died when that Voyager exploded, taking a Vidiian ship with it. She wore her old hairstyle, but it was primarily instinct rather than evidence which told her that this was the woman who had exhorted her from the viewscreen to get her ship home. Herself until their lives diverged.

There must be hundreds such selves, she realized. Different timelines, different universes. A Kathryn who had never gotten lost in the Delta Quadrant, and had gone home after her three-week mission, with her Maquis captives or without. A Kathryn who'd ended up a on Chakotay's ship, rather than the reverse. A Kathryn who'd chosen not to save the Ocampa, who'd gone home following the incident with the Caretaker, and found that she couldn't go back to her old life--to Starfleet and Mark. A Kathryn who never returned from Old Earth, who'd gotten stuck in the 20th century along with her crew.

In another universe, this duplicate Kathryn would have lived, and she herself would have died. Victim of the Vidiians, or of her own self-destruct order. Two of the ship, two of her, from the other side. She felt the same oddness as during that earlier incident talking to her double in engineering...the sense that, while she could predict this woman's actions and answers, she wasn't certain she knew her.

Am I always so serious? she wondered, looking at her companion's unsmiling face, framed by the bun she'd given up wearing. The face of a scientist, the face of a starship captain. Not necessarily the face of a friend. She'd had the same thought the last time they'd met--not a lack of trust, but a recognition of her own stubbornness and blind spots, a combination of fear and an unwillingness to examine too closely. This time she was determined to get closer.

"Kathryn?" she asked the other, awkwardly, and was surprised at her own smile on someone else's face. Her breath caught. The expression transformed her, lighting her eyes, taking years away from her features. _I have to remember to smile more often._

"I wasn't sure I'd ever see you again," the other Kathryn was saying. "You're always so--scientific, and this is a spiritual plane we meet on."

"_I'm_ always so scientific?" she demanded. "Not _we_'re always so scientific?"

"I've been different since I died," the other raised an eyebrow mysteriously, and they both grinned.

"I needed to see you." She felt foolish saying the words to herself. "I've had questions..."

"I know. And there are things you can confide in me which you don't think you can tell anyone else."

"You say that as if it's criticism," she heard defensiveness in her voice.

"Not criticism. I see from a different perspective now." The other moved differently too. Despite the uniform she wore, there was no trace of Starfleet demeanor; the other seemed completely relaxed, arms dangling free at her sides. Wherever she had come from, she seemed happy.

"Then...there is an afterlife?"

"D you really doubt it? We told Harry Kim that what we don't know about death is far greater than what we do know." Her double was smiling again. "I didn't realize how much I believed that until I died. You believe it too, but you've been hurt, so you're not letting yourself trust."

"Then you know about what happened to me? With the alien who pretended to be our father?"

The other sighed in momentary frustration. "I don't know what you felt, no. I don't share your experiences from the moment we separated any more than you shared my death. Why don't you tell me about it?"

They walked along the beach as she talked, describing the events as they had unfolded: the shuttle crash, Chakotay saving her, the Vidiians, the time loop. The shuttle exploding, the Doctor's treachery, the finality of her death seen from a distance, her father, her funeral. Letting Kes walk through her, not being able to contact Tuvok. Reaching out to a crew which was already letting her go, not wanting to believe that they could go on without her--not willing to let them. Chakotay holding her in his arms, crying. Vanquishing the alien, inviting him on the boat.

"You had a busy day," her double said dryly. "But I'm not sure how that last figures into the problem."

"'Boat ride' is sort of an understatement. 'Midnight sail' is what I said to him." Her twin raised an eyebrow. "He did save my life. And, um, he gave me a flower."

Up shot the other brow, half her mouth curling to the side. "I see." She was alarmed to note that her face did a lousy job of hiding when she was amused. She wondered for a moment if her other self might envy her the life she'd lost, but her face was peaceful; wherever she existed now, it apparently fulfilled her. Recognizing the need to put her own false postmortem experiences into context, she began to describe her life from the moment when it had diverged from the other Kathryn's. It was easiest to work backwards, to the common point of experience. The abortive trip to Earth's past...the loss of the ship temporarily to the Kazon...Seska, the baby...New Earth. The bathtub, the monkey, the river, the storm, the night after the storm. Then the communicator signal, putting on the uniforms, coming back to the ship.

The other Kathryn listened silently for the most part, nodding understanding. Finally she asked, "Why didn't you talk to him about what happened to you?"

"To Chakotay? How could I? I don't even know how much of what I witnessed during the hallucinations was real. Not his reaction, not even my own response. How am I supposed to ask him whether I really saw him crying over me?"

"He'd answer you." Her companion shook her head slowly. "No matter what the details were, do you have any doubt of his feelings?"

No, she almost said, before realizing that that wasn't completely true--and that that was part of the problem. "Of course. Aren't there always doubts?" She felt herself becoming flushed, angry at her other self and at Chakotay. "He's never said anything that couldn't be misinterpreted," she said carefully. "I think he does it deliberately, he doesn't say--the big words. Maybe he doesn't feel things as deeply..."

"...as you obviously want to believe that he does, or that alien wouldn't have given you the hallucinations you had," the counterpart Kathryn finished easily. "I know. I thought the same things, until I died."

That refrain was getting a little tiresome. "Was it different afterwards? Were you in some place where you knew everything, and all secrets were revealed?"

"No." The other smiled, embarrassed. "I set the auto-destruct for five minutes. The bridge was mostly empty, everyone was fighting the Vidiians. We had time to kill. He told me."

She didn't know why that should shock her, but the words sent a thrill through her body, anticipation and something akin to jealousy. Aloud she said, "It was disturbing, to learn that, of anything I might have been thinking about when I died, I wanted to see him mourn me--the alien wouldn't have shown me that, otherwise, would he? I didn't even think about Mother, or Mark." Whirling, she stopped walking and put her arm on her double's. "What were you thinking about, when you died?"

Her other self turned away from her, shaking her head the way she sometimes did to make herself stop thinking an embarrassing or painful thought. She realized that she could actually feel her arm on the other woman's--not just the pressure of the skin under her fingers, but the grip of someone else's hand on her own arm. She jerked away.

"Is that where he got it from? I was picking up your thoughts, from when you died? And you're projecting your physical feelings onto me now?"

"I'm not projecting anything, Kathryn. I don't have the same kind of corporeal sensation that you do. But there are resonances between us. That physical feeling's one of them. What I was thinking when I died might be another."

Not at all pleased at the thought that her own emotions could be manipulated by some other Kathryn in some other universe, she demanded, "Then tell me what happened."

"When I gave the self-destruct order, there were things which had to be done to distract me for the first minute--systems shutdowns to make sure the Vidiians wouldn't be able to override, that kind of work. I was thinking about Tom and B'Elanna--how they must have died--and Harry running through the corridors to get to your ship. I was nervous. Wondering whether we would feel anything before we dematerialized, and if it would hurt--I guess everyone thinks about that. I tried not to think too much about anything other than the fact that the Vidiians weren't going to get us, and they weren't going to get you, either."

The other Kathryn took a deep breath. "Those were the first two minutes. Then--I panicked, for a few seconds. I didn't want to die. I wasn't even sure it mattered if the bridge crew heard me cry at that point--we were all going to be dead in a few more seconds, did it matter if I wasn't acting like the captain at the end? He must have sensed something, because he turned right then, when I was about to fall apart. He said my name. He'd never done that before."

She nodded. Until she'd told Chakotay to call her Kathryn on that first day of their exile, he had never called her anything but Captain. There had been times when she thought he might--when she ordered him to let the ship blow up with her aboard, when they'd entered the cargo bay together to see which of their crew had elected to stay with the 37s--but he never had. She tried to imagine what it would have been like, at the last moment of her life.

Her counterpart was shaking her head, eyes closed, continuing. "Well, it did distract me from worrying about dying. I knew what he was trying to tell me--what he was going to tell me, if I let him. And, I realized that, since I knew what he was going to say, I'd known before how he felt. I couldn't help thinking, what if our lives weren't going to end in less than two minutes--if he'd said something straightforward to me while we still had a chance. Probably I was only letting myself think about it because he and I were both going to die. But at that moment, I stopped and let myself think how I felt about him. And I knew I'd known that before, too."

They were both silent, walking, for several beats. The sky was changing colors, the sun beginning to sink below the horizon. She was achingly uncomfortable with this confession out of her own mouth. "But you can't be sure--you might have been feeling what you were feeling because you were going to die, not in spite of it."

"Oh, I know that," the other readily agreed. "I wondered, before the Vidiians came onto the bridge, what I would tell you, if I could talk to you once more. Whether I would tell you not to let yourself and him slip past one another--or whether that was one thing I shouldn't tell you, since you still had your life to live."

She stopped to pick up a stone, rubbed the markings on its face. Indelible. It reminded her of Chakotay's stone, the one in the medicine bundle. Abruptly she remembered the stone she'd seen earlier, briefly, when he took out the akunah--the new one. A stone from the river. It was all too easy to guess which river it had come from. The one they'd never gotten to explore, on the boat ride they hadn't taken.

"I guess you decided what to tell me, if you're telling me this now."

"No, Kathryn. You decided." She saw her own smile again on her counterpart's face. "This is your vision, not mine. Given that there are infinite universes, there must be a reason that you picked me of all Kathryn Janeways to converse with."

"I didn't pick you. My animal guide said..."

"...that I might be able to answer your questions. This self, this time. Why do you think that is?"

"Because you know what it's like to die," she realized. "And--you know what it's like to die with Chakotay." She hesitated. "But there have been other complications between us since he saved me from that alien."

"Since you saved yourself," she was corrected. "Like what?"

"Well, for one thing, there was another woman..."

She stopped. That wasn't what she had intended to say. She meant to tell her other self about the Borg collective, her realization of how much Chakotay needed to belong to someone, someplace--how that had scared her, that weakness. Standing in Sickbay, hearing herself talk in the same condescending voice she used to comfort distraught ensigns--"Helping others, Chakotay, that's part of who you are"--not certain she believed the altruism. She'd been dispassionate reading his report on Riley (and he'd spared no detail), seeing a man not himself, injured and under the influence of alien mind control, not unlike herself possessed by the Bothans. She had not condemned him--not for sharing physical pleasure with a woman who could insinuate her own desires directly into his mind. Her anger had stemmed from his muddled loyalties to the ship. Even if he was directly under the control of the Borg neurotransmitter when he stood in the conference room, pleading for Riley, avoiding her own eyes, he had not been able to put Voyager's interests first. That was what she blamed him for, not for a fling with a woman who in the end had not hesitated to use him for her own purposes, no matter how much that might have hurt him...

The other Kathryn had stopped and was watching her from the corner of her eye, waiting. Arms crossed defensively over her chest. "It wasn't what that sounded like," she amended. "It's not like he went looking for someone else--though there's no reason why he shouldn't have, I've never given him any indication that I want him to wait. I wanted him to get past it. So we could be friends at least."

"Aren't you friends?"

"It's so hard, worrying that I'm hurting him--I didn't want him to feel this way, I wish I could treat this like any other crew crush. I need him too much for this as my first officer."

"But you're the one who's been keeping your distance from him."

"I know that." Stricken, she felt tears spring to her eyes. "I don't know why I'm taking this personally at all."

"Yes, you do. What are you going to do about it?"

She had no answer. The obvious choice--to admit how the whole incident had made her feel--was fraught with danger, for the ship as well as for both of them. If he'd balked at an order to let her go down with the ship months ago, what would happen if she gave him any indication...

"He loves you anyway," her other self said, reading her mind. "That's not the real problem, is it?"

Of course it wasn't. The real problem was that she loved him. Not just him, either. B'Elanna, Tuvok, Tom, Kes. All of them. She didn't think she could bear to lose another crewmember. The ground rushed up to her--no, she was collapsing in the grass, burying her face in her hands. Too much responsibility. No way to go on either side.

"Tell me that they all live after they die. That they find peace, same as you. All these lives--the best I can do isn't going to save them--"

"Can't you forgive yourself a little, Kathryn?"

So strange and so painful, to hear her own voice, the condescending tone she herself used with recalcitrant crewmembers, coming out of her own mouth, but directed at herself. To see her flaws undistorted by the mirror, the features reversed, as if they were somehow confronting her. She looked up into her own face, blurred by her tears.

"We're scientists, remember? You're supposed to seek the truth." She almost envied her dead self the knowledge she could not yet reach, the certainty that what waited was not the terror held out by that alien pretending to be their father, but the place Chakotay believed in, where he had met his own father and changed the course of his own destiny. Her double looked at her with a mixture of exasperation and affection, as though she were a child.

"Can't you at least love yourself a little?"

She looked at the woman, her self as an alien, staring back at her. Not really any more predictable than anyone else she knew. Understanding, but essentially foreign, a different skin, with a little of her parents and grandparents mixed in, expressions she'd picked up from her teachers, a gesture every now and then that reminded her of a friend.

Everyone she had ever cared about in her life was here, in this one person who was not wholly herself.

"I can love you," she said.

Her duplicate reached out and stroked her face, across her cheek. She was shaken, dazed. Without conscious thought, she did the same--traced her fingers across the identical cheekbone, watched eyes like her own close in pleasure at the contact. She could feel echoes of her fingers on the other's face against her own skin.

This must be what it was like for Chakotay in the link with Riley, she thought, and felt no rancor. So compelling, to touch oneself through another's hand. She could tell from the look in the eyes which mirrored hers that her twin knew exactly what she was feeling.

"I'm sorry--" She jolted back, humiliated. "This isn't like me." But the other eyes held no condemnation, just curiosity.

"No?" Amusement, reflected to her in her own voice. "Last time I saw you, you used to touch people all the time. Which one of us do you want to hold responsible now?" Blushing, she turned away, but there was no point in lying to herself--either of herselves. She'd never met anyone who'd understood her so thoroughly, instantly, without censure.

"Is any of this real?"

"Does it feel real?"

"Yes, but you could be just as much a figment of my imagination as those alien illusions. What's my body doing right now?"

"I imagine sitting on the floor in Chakotay's quarters, and he's driving himself crazy trying to figure out the expression on your face." Her double smiled slyly.

"I'm not sure what I'm supposed to learn from this," she managed.

The other laughed, a wild, free sound which she hadn't heard from her own lips since...probably since New Earth, when Chakotay was teasing her about the bathtub. "You have more answers inside of you than you think you do, Kathryn. But you can't always find them yourself--not with science or all your training, not even asking your animal guide." The deceased Kathryn sounded like her guide from the Nikani. "Let me tell you something. When you're really dead, you realize that all the restrictions you put on yourself stem from timidity, not strength. Things you deny yourself, you don't get a second chance to try again. Stop backing away from asking the questions you really want to ask. Starship captains don't give in easily to fear, remember?"

She felt as if she were falling, the world contracting to the two of them until she couldn't tell where one of them ended and the other began. The sky darkened, the ground fading like a holodeck program turned off, nothing remaining but the participants. "Believe in this, Kathryn," her self said to her. She lifted her arms and threw her head back, and for a moment looked like she was out of focus--as if hundreds, even thousands of other Kathryn Janeways were superimposed on this one, so bright that it was difficult to look at her. The image rose, all the trappings of her rank and role falling away--she was naked, and glorious, a self perfected. The multiple Kathryns smiled, then walked straight through Captain Janeway of the starship Voyager, just as Captain Janeway had done to Kes when she thought she was dead in an alien vision.

For a split second, she was all those Kathryn Janeways. She could see all the consequences of every choice she'd ever made, going back to her early childhood, she was in direct contact with all the women she could have become. The joy was overwhelming, even after the light became too bright for her eyes, and then everything went dark.

When she could see again, she was on the beach, it was night, and she was alone.

Not quite alone. The little lizard was beside her.

"What the hell was that all about?" she demanded, puzzled and slightly embarrassed.

Slowly, deliberately, the creature followed its own tail in a circle.

She shook her head, shifting uncomfortably. "Well, there must be a reason. She told me I have more answers inside me than I think I do. But then why was I here with myself, if I can't get the answers out of myself? Or even out of you?"

Her animal guide cocked its head expectantly, then began to retreat.

"Then what am I doing here at all?" She was going to have to complain to Chakotay about this animal guide business. Not only was it unscientific, it operated in the kinds of circles that gave her a headache. The lizard was laughing again. "I don't know where else I can look for answers..."

She stopped.

"Because I can't get them while I'm here at all," she realized abruptly. "That whole time, I was trying to tell myself..."

She opened her eyes to find herself sitting on Chakotay's floor, where he stared with an expression of wide-eyed wonder on his face.

"How long..." she finally managed to ask.

"A few minutes--less than five, I think. I got worried about you at the end--you were trembling. Did you find your animal guide?"

"Yes." Belatedly she felt herself flushing, her body responding to the adrenaline surging through her. He studied her face as she evaded his eyes. "It wasn't what I was expecting, though."

"Did you get answers? About your nightmares?"

"I'm not sure." She stretched her legs out in front of her, trying to calm down. "Can I ask you some questions?"

"Of course. Just give me a minute." He got up and went over to the replicator, bringing more tea for himself and some for her.

She sipped quietly, trying to think where to start. "Do you really believe that the dead can speak to the living? You can contact the spirits of your ancestors and they're really there, not just in your own mind?"

"I'm not sure." She watched him lift his head to regard the medicine wheel on the wall. "I was raised to believe that, yes. I've had experiences which I can't explain, in scientific terms, and I believe in their validity. But I don't have a clear mental picture of the afterlife, either."

"That alien...the one who almost killed me. He did everything I'd heard people experience in near-death encounters. He looked and talked like my father, he tried to make me accept my death. I watched everyone letting me go. Even you--you resisted it the most. Chakotay, if you believed I was dead, would you try to contact me in the next life?"

"I don't know." His face was dark, troubled.

"'I'm not sure' and 'I don't know' aren't the most comforting answers I can think of."

He refused to meet her half-smile. "I have a feeling that if you died, I wouldn't be able to meditate at all. It would take all my energy just to put on a front for the crew. If I let myself try to contact you, if I had any sense that you were out there, waiting for me..."

"Yes?" she prodded quietly.

"I'd never be able to let go," he finished. "I wouldn't want to wait to join you. Kathryn, I can't imagine going on without you right now, I can't imagine this ship without you." He turned his face away. "I know, I'm the first officer, and this is not what you want to hear me say. But it's the truth. If you died, I would have to find some way to let you go quickly, or I might never truly be able to be Voyager's captain. I've been trying to find some way to let go as it is--I know that's what you want, so it doesn't ever come to pass..."

She was silent for a long time, unable to speak or even to drink the tea, digesting what he'd said. Wondering whether the burden of her own feelings would seem greater or lessened if she took on his as well. Remembering what her double had told her about herself and Chakotay, in the timeline where they died together.

"Some days...I want to wake up and find out that our lives these past months were all a dream, and I'm still living on New Earth with you." His exhaled exclamation sounded a little too much like a sob, and she held up her hand to make sure he would let her finish. "I feel so guilty, Chakotay. I don't want to leave Voyager, even when things are going badly and I think we'll never get home--I realized that when Culluh took the ship. But I wish I could find a way to keep more of what we had on that planet right here, for both of us."

His hands were half-held out to her, awkwardly, as though he wanted to embrace her but wasn't sure she'd let him, yet he couldn't completely hold the impulse back. She reached out to him, felt his arms go around her and his chin come down over her head, keeping the side of her face pressed against his neck. "Sometimes I think it would be easier if there were two of you," he was saying. "The captain of Voyager, and the person I shared my life with those weeks. But I can't separate them, and neither can you. When I met you, you were a starship captain--not even being stranded without a ship could change that--but that wasn't all you were, and I don't want it to become all you are."

"I don't know how to be any other me," she said ruefully.

"I remember the first time I told you about animal guides--you were concerned that you weren't close enough to the crew, you wanted to join people on the holodeck. I was so happy to realize that you were that kind of captain--that you weren't going to shut yourself up in your ready room. That you'd be part of the crew. But you changed."

"I thought it was a mistake," she whispered, moving back a little. He let her; they both needed distance to have this conversation. "When Durst died, and Bandara, and Hogan--I started to realize that it was too dangerous for me to be so involved with any of the crew."

He let out a breath, hard. "I'm glad to hear you say that. Not because I agree--I think you're wrong. But I thought maybe it was something I'd done."

"Something you'd done? I don't understand."

He looked away from her, then rose and paced to the viewport. looking out at the stars. "I realized...I thought you must have known how I felt about you. And that I never should have let you see, since you seemed to take that as a reason to start isolating yourself, and avoiding friendships with people serving under you. It was even worse after New Earth--I couldn't even get you to talk to me--"

"I'm sorry." She couldn't speak for several seconds, realizing how deeply she must have hurt him--not as a rebuffed lover, but as her friend and first officer, who blamed himself for her isolation and the effect it had on herself and the ship. "It wasn't ever you, Chakotay. It was almost losing the ship, twice, because of Dreadnought and then because of Seska. And what almost happened to Harry. And Tuvix. I had to balance the responsibility..."

She choked up again, felt him come back across the room, sit beside her. "It's me," she admitted finally. "I could have to order anyone on this crew to his or her death at any time. Even you--I've watched you refuse to let me die, twice, and I can't afford to feel the same way."

"Is it so much easier to let go now?" he asked gently. She flinched at the honest response in her mind. "Can I tell you something I learned from that Borg collective? It's very seductive, that sort of closeness. You feel like the other people are a part of you, you're not sure how you lived without that sort of communication. When I left, I wanted to bring them with me--even though the neural link would be severed, I still felt like they were a part of me, and I wanted to hold on to that connection. A real community. It felt...a lot like love." She turned her head sharply. "I even thought about asking if I could stay with them when I realized Riley wouldn't come with me. But I couldn't do that, any more than they could go. I couldn't leave this ship. Or, to the point, I couldn't leave you. That would have been cutting out a bigger part of myself than I lost when I lost the connection to them."

She understood the feeling all too well. It was how she felt about him, and every single person on the ship. That conflict--she couldn't afford to let herself connect for fear of losing the connection and becoming incomplete. Yet she was incomplete without it as well.

"I saw myself in my vision," she whispered to him. "The me from the other Voyager, from the accident which duplicated the ship."

"That is interesting. Two of you. Was she sorry about what happened?"

"Not at all. She looked more comfortable than I've felt in a long time."

"Did she make you feel split apart?"

"No." She smiled. "She made me feel whole. She kept trying to tell me that I'm complete, I have the answers within me. But I can't find them myself."

"What did she think you should do about that?"

"She thought I should ask you." He blinked in surprise. "What do you think I should do?"

He looked torn--wavering between what he wanted and what he thought was right, not certain whether there was a difference. "I think I might have to consult with _my_ animal guide before I answer that one," he said ruefully, and she laughed.

"Can I ask you something else?"

"Go ahead."

"Are all the things we see in trances symbolic of something, or just random archetypes?"

"I'm not sure what you mean." He lifted his mug to his mouth as he waited for her to explain. She took a deep breath and concentrated on the far wall with the medicine wheel.

"Does it mean anything in particular if you see yourself naked in a vision?"

She heard him try to choke back his drink before spluttering it all over the table, watched his hand quaver as he set the mug down, sloshing tea everywhere. "I, uh...I'm sorry," he was laughing helplessly. "Um, my tradition is based on the balance of the elements and the power of nature. I would say that if you were naked in your vision...that is, in general, nudity in a trance might have something to do with not hiding from oneself. I guess it could be an indication that the seeker needs closer contact with noncorporeal things instead of material ones. Spiritual instead of physical matter."

"She looked pretty physical to me." Her tone was nonchalant, though she felt her face turning scarlet. But Chakotay didn't notice, because he had buried his head in both hands and was practically howling.

"Stop. Now _I'm_ going to have visions of this for months. I think next time you enter a trance, you definitely need to take me with you. Please." They were both chuckling, avoiding one another's eyes, but it was comfortable embarrassment. He straightened slightly beside her, glanced at her as if he needed to make sure they could stop grinning before he spoke again. "OK. Seriously? Maybe it means that you need more direct interaction with your own feelings. Or your animal guide."

"I asked my animal guide about it. He laughed at me."

"Not really?"

"He certainly did."

Chakotay grinned again, then shook his head slightly. "Kathryn...this isn't something you're going to solve in one night. I still have nightmares about things which happened to me in the Maquis four years ago. But I know what I think you should do."

"What's that?"

"Stop trying to work all this out yourself. Tonight, well, you're probably tired from that vision, but right now I think you should go to the holodeck. Even if they're running that awful beach resort, just long enough to say hello. It's different than participating in talent night or tennis matches if you just drop by to be friendly. Just to make contact."

She nodded. "And you think that will chase my nightmares away?"

His grin was unrestrained. "If not, I could try a purification ritual to chase them out of your bed. I might have to stay with you all night, though..."

They were laughing as she swatted at him and he hauled her to her feet so they could head together for the door.


End file.
